Can you believe it’s already February?! Where did January even go? I hope everyone’s February is off to a good start!
Since the start of the New Year, I’ve been writing a lot on the blog about my goal process and how I reflect on goals from the previous year before I set new ones. Because of this, I’ve found myself reflecting on my journey with perfection: how it has affected me, how it’s changed, and how it’s made me who I am.
If you’ve read my story, you know I grew up a goodie two-shoes, a rule follower. I strived for perfection in everything I did. Sure, I felt a lot of pressure to be perfect growing up, especially from my mom (love you mom!), but a lot of it came from within. I loved receiving praise. I loved being seen as perfect. And that fueled me to be more perfect. However, now I know that this is likely one of the driving forces of my anxiety, which I’ve struggled with my whole life.
It took me awhile to get off the hamster wheel. I’ve always had a go-getter attitude, and for the better portion of my young-adult life, that meant striving for success (or what I thought was my definition of success at the time). I was always trying to get straight As. I always wanted to be the best at everything I did. I went right from college to get a PhD in Neuroscience. Straight from there to a postdoctoral fellowship at Emory in Atlanta, Georgia. Even though I really didn’t want to move there, I did it because it was the next best move to make on my success train. And then I went right from Emory to my dream job, as an Assistant Professor in Vermont, a state I so desperately wanted to live in. I strived for perfection in everything that I did, so that everyone else could see I was successful. So when the dream job didn’t end up being the dream job I thought it would be, I was paralyzed. I didn’t know how to escape the stress and burnout without showing that I was imperfect, that I was a failure.
When I finally did allow myself to let go of perfection, it was life changing. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done.
When I first let go of perfection
It didn’t happen quickly. Even when I left academia and took a paycut to be an editor, I still wanted to climb my way up that success train too. Since I was a go-getter, managers naturally wanted me to take on more work. I was working crazy hours, trying to prove myself, to get that next promotion. That next-step job title and raise. But once again, I was burning myself out in the process.
I’ll never forget when I was meeting with a colleague, telling him how burned out I was and how I didn’t think I could sustain the hours I was working, and he gently told me I had to try a little less hard. I was shocked. Even if he felt that way, I couldn’t believe he would admit it! But he reminded me that editing is all about the delicate balance between quality and efficiency. He reminded me that my quality was higher than most of the other editors, and yet we weren’t striving for perfection at this company. In fact, we had multiple editing tiers we delivered to our clients, and I edited our “standard” product, meaning we actually advertised less than perfection. I was allowed to make a few mistakes in my editing. However, to my perfectionist self, it still didn’t feel good to make mistakes.
But what choice did I have? I couldn’t sustain the way I was working. So I dabbled. I started to edit a little faster. Let a few more things go.
And you know what happened? My quality didn’t suffer. My managers still loved me. I still received tons of client requests for my editing work. And my work-life balance improved immensely.
It didn’t stop there. Letting go of perfection helped me in so many other ways at work. Because I was so much more efficient, working fewer hours with more time to myself, I began to do more self-reflection. I realized I loved what I did, and I didn’t actually want to be a manager. That meant not climbing the ladder, not looking for a promotion. But on the other side of it, I would be living true to myself and my wants, not what I thought society wanted.
Letting go of perfection helped my life outside of work too. It helped with my anxiety, my relationships with friends and family, my marriage. It helped me see more clearly what I wanted my life to look like for me, not for others.
How it’s going now
Of course I still struggle here and there and have to actively remind myself to let go sometimes. After all, no one is perfect, not even at letting go of being perfect. Even though I’m in a more demanding job now, I’ve taken steps such as setting better boundaries at work. But there are still situations, especially in my personal life, that throw me for a loop.
A real-life example
Mr. Dink and I really like to host. We love our home, and we love welcoming others into it. But even as I’m writing this, I feel my anxiety bubbling up. I often get really weird when Mr. Dink and I talk about hosting more than just a friend or two. This last Easter was one of those times.
Easter was one of those holidays where we didn’t have a set tradition for where we would have dinner, so last year, Mr. Dink and I decided we would host a small gathering. In addition to my mom, we would invite Mr. Dink’s aunt and uncle, who hosted us for a few Easters before the pandemic. That felt doable.
But then, we were with my brother and sister-in-law, and Mr. Dink brought up Easter dinner and how they should come. Then, my sister-in-law asked if her parents could come up from Connecticut. Immediately, I got this feeling in my stomach. Not the feeling of warmth and excitement, but the feeling of pure dread. I’ve had it before, especially when it comes to hosting.
We had hosted a Christmas Eve dinner pre-pandemic, and Mr. Dink’s mom invited additional people without asking. I panicked then, too. In fact, I more than panicked, I was a total B about it. It was all I thought about. But I didn’t actually think about where the feelings were coming from. I was just feeling the feelings and letting the thoughts associated with them run wild. Because I didn’t know the meaning behind these thoughts, I couldn’t articulate why I was so upset to Mr. Dink, so I let it go.
This time, with Easter dinner, I was in a different place. I had a better handle on my body and being in tune with myself, thanks in part to meditation. Mr. Dink and I had made leaps and bounds in our communication skills. So when I attempted to talk to him about what was bothering me about Easter dinner, it went a lot differently this time.
And I had a revelation. When I really thought about it, I wasn’t worried about the actual act of hosting and the number of people. That’s just what I assumed I was worried about because it made sense to me at the time. It seemed logical. Who wants all these people in their house? The mess to clean up? The personality clashes?
But when I really thought about it, in a safe space where I wasn’t panicking, I realized that I was excited for Mr. Dink and I to make our delicious food for the people we love. We have the space in our home. We have a comfortable space for everyone to be able to sit and have a good time. We don’t mind cleaning up. And Mr. Dink and I are a great team when it comes to hosting and cooking. We would have an amazing time. So why was I still so freaked out?
I realized that the problem was my obsession with perfection, and hosting was a big trigger. The way I was brought up instilled in me this desire to be perfect. The problem was the external world, the external judgment, the pressures on women to be perfect that I hadn’t allowed myself to explore and that have unconsciously hindered me for years.
I love my mom dearly, and I realized that watching her obsess over hosting my whole life likely affected me too. I saw the most hilarious reel the other day on social media of a husband acting out how his wife behaves when people come over, sprucing up the house in a frenzy. The first comment was from the wife and read “Don’t blame me. Blame my mom.” I had to laugh. I felt so seen.
Just like how I had been acting for years, my mom used to panic and obsess over literally everything whenever we had people over. Everything had to be perfect. When it came to other people, she couldn’t bear the thought of seeming like everything wasn’t perfect. And it’s not just my mom, it’s many women. I realized that, as a woman growing up in this society we live in, I have been constantly made to feel like I’m not enough, like what I do is not enough, especially when it comes to hosting. No wonder I’ve been obsessed with perfection.
But my a-ha moment that night was not just this realization that I felt the pressure from society to be perfect. If that was the case, I would just put the blame on society and move on. No, my a-ha was that I need to overcome, not to blame. This blame and shame about hosting and perfection has likely been happening to women for generations. My mom likely acts the way she does when it comes to hosting because of how her mom acted and treated her. We recently watched the whole Mad Men series and holy moly does it make me grateful to have been born in 1987.
With this knowledge, I can let go of blame and shame and take charge of and responsibility for my own actions. Society and others in it likely will not change. So instead, I need to honor myself and who I am, not who society wants me to be or who others think I should be. I realized that it’s okay more than okay to host the way I want to host. I may feel the pressure to be perfect, but I don’t have to allow it make me fearful, to stop me from having a good time. I can let go of perfection and just be myself. Besides, who am I if I’m not me?
The same goes for our money
I’ve also really embraced letting go of perfection when it comes to my personal finance journey.
I’ve always been really good at saving, and I’ve never had a strict budget because I’ve always spent less than I earn. When I first learned about the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) movement, I loved the idea of financial freedom and hitting my FIRE number (25 times your yearly expenses), but retiring early never really resonated with me. I liked working, I liked what I did for work, and I liked making money. But since I was a good saver, striving to hit my financial independence number seemed like a good and achievable goal for me.
There was SO MUCH advice out there in the personal finance community about tracking spending, with spreadsheets full of data. It was overwhelming for someone like me who didn’t love spreadsheets or tracking. I like to keep things simple. And even now, being a blogger in the space, I sometimes feel pressure (although I’m sure it comes completely from within) to focus more on the numbers, but it’s just not who I am.
I have to let go of perfection. I have to do what’s best for me.
My personal finance journey isn’t perfect, but I dare you to find someone’s who is. Personal finance is just that, personal, and everyone’s journeys are going to be different. Comparison can be the real killer here. That’s why I love this community. We all put out our own stories into the world so that all our voices can be heard, and we can inspire others to join us in their own way. Not to fall in line with what we do, but to think about their own personal finance journeys and where they fit under the umbrella. When I first started reading personal finance blogs, even though everything everyone said didn’t resonate, little pieces of each blog did. Reading about everyone else’s stories gave me the courage and motivation to start paying attention to my own finances. And that’s really the goal I think of this space: to empower everyone, no matter where they’re starting, to embark on their own personal finance journey.
Where are you on your personal finance journey? What have you let go of to get to where you are? And what else do you need to let go of to get to where you’re headed next? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear from you!